commitment Archives | The Glasshammer

As a leader who wishes to inspire and empower, you will be more impactful if you earn the trust of those whom you wish to lead. For that trust to be built upon a solid foundation, you must first cultivate a deep sense of inner self-trust.

It’s an axiom for a reason. The most important relationship is the one you build with yourself, and the relationship you wish to build with others begins with you.

Trust is Relational and Earned

Let’s talk relationship dynamics. Within the organism of any organization, trust is the precursor and basis of a functioning team. When trust is absent, the team cannot effectively resolve conflict, foster commitment, create accountability, or develop and deliver to its capacity.

Well, the same is true with yourself. Without a basis of self-trust, how can you confront decisions where you feel internally divided, authentically commit, be accountable, develop, or reach your goals?

Trust is also at the crux of any close, enduring relationship. Trust is not owed to another—it is earned. Trust is relational, and self-trust is a fundamental reflection of the quality of relationship you have with yourself.

What is the gap between your values and your life?
Between your words and your actions?
Between your knowing and your doing?
Between what truly matters to you and what you give time and energy to?

If there are real gaps, and you are a self-aware person, you will know and feel it—even if you avoid knowing that you know. These gaps create leaks in self-trust. They dilute your sense of self and integrity.

Self-trust comes from living in alignment with your truths and values, and being able to admit, and even amend, where you fall out of alignment.

The Self-Trust and Confidence Loop

According to Stephen M. R. Covey, self-trust is finding yourself credible. The four cores of credibility are comprised of:

Character (who you are):

Intent – being straightforward in motivation with genuine care in others
Integrity – being honest, keeping promises, aligning action and values, willingness to do the hard thing if the right thing

Competence (what you do):

Capabilities – gifts, skills, knowledge, styles of approaching
Results – your followthrough, consistency, and outcomes

As you build self-trust, it gives rise to a feeling of self-assurance and authentic confidence, based on a grounded experience of yourself that is greater than dips in motivation and emotional fluctuations. On a shaky day, you know you’re strong at the roots.

When your act with intent, leverage your capabilities, and follow through, you accumulate self-trust and generate confidence.

The loop then reinforces itself. The behaviors that build self-trust contribute to a feeling of confidence which gives you the courage to take more actions (such as trying new things, taking on challenges and making commitments) that lead to greater self-trust.

Six Types of Relational Trust—With Yourself?

In healthy relationships, there are six different kinds of trust that can be nurtured. One category is about self-trust. But what if you treated each as important to your relationship with self? Let’s adapt them and see.

1) Emotional trust – to allow vulnerability, show up to feelings with empathy rather than judgement, and to foster deeper connection.

How do you allow space for your emotions? What do you try to avoid or ignore feeling? What feeling could you be more open to?
How strong is your inner critic versus your inner sense of compassion? Whose voice is more prominent for you?
How are you kind to yourself? How do you trivialize or undermine your needs? How could you be more receptive and open to yourself?

2) Instrumental trust – to consistently show up, follow through on commitments, and keep promises.

How do you already show up consistently for what matters to you?
What is one way you could easily commit to regularly showing up to something important to you? Make it achievable.
How do you keep your word with yourself? How do you break your word with yourself?

3) Informational trust – to be able to be truthful, transparent, clear, and honest with yourself

How willing are you to admit the truths you know deep down within?
Where in your life may you be avoiding being honest with yourself or others?
Where in life would you like to become clearer and more transparent? What stops you?

4) Self-trust – to honor your worth, trust your judgement and intuition, and to show up to challenges

From where do your source your sense of self and worth? Is there anywhere where you are still trying to win approval?
What are examples of trusting your discernment or intuition? Where in life have you, or are you, dismissing your intuition?
What challenges have you taken on? What is a growth space you’d like to step into, but have yet to?

5) Situational trust – to be able to trust and rely on self in particular contexts, based on strengths and knowledge in that space

In what contexts, situations, and discussions do you really trust in yourself and your capacity?
In what contexts, situations, and discussions do you feel disconnected from your self-trust? Why?
Is there a context in which you wish to improve trust in self? How could you?

6) Physical trust – to feel safe in your own presence, knowing you will respect and protect your own health and safety

How are you looking after your wellbeing and health as the only human in charge of that job?
In what ways do you compromise your wellbeing and health? How could you be more protective and caring?
What would it mean to show yourself more love and respect? What would change?

It’s the one relationship you’ve been in since the moment you became aware of yourself, so it’s a good question to ask: do I have a relationship of trust with myself, and how can I improve that relationship?

And if you are willing, you may find the same is true as in any relationship. Growth requires a willingness to have the real, and sometimes challenging, conversations with yourself.

But if you do, integrity becomes its own reward.

By: Aimee Hansen is a long time writer and heart coach with theglasshammer.com. Her recent work includes “This Book is a Retreat” co-written with Marianne Richmond.

If you would like to work with Aimee or any of our coaches including Nicki Gilmour our head coach and founder, please click HERE for a free, exploratory call with Nicki who can match you with the right coach for you (we have six coaches, all with different backgrounds who can help you depending on what you need).

by Aimee Hansen

What desire or longing do you have?

Is there something you want to be, or do, or feel or have?

Is there something within that seeks to be expressed or experienced, or that calls for a change?

Okay, but what are you committing to?

You may know what you want, but are you affirming your desire and moving towards it?

Often, we habitually commit to undermining our desires.

Until we bring this harsh truth into awareness, we might be working against ourselves. If you have a desire that you are not nurturing, asking yourself this question:

Instead of your desire, what are you actually committing to?

Ask in a day-in, day-out kind of way. Ask when it comes to your habits, actions, thoughts and beliefs.

Often, we are not aware or radically self-honest about what we are actually committing to instead of our true desires.

We think of committing to something as being intentional and deliberate investment towards a goal or agreement. But intention is not necessary. In practice, repetitive habit alone creates commitment.

On a daily basis, we might “commit” to bottling up anger, people-pleasing, holding back our “no”, scrolling on our phone, over-working and perpetuating 24/7 availability.

Notice how the language “commit” usually refers to a mistake or a crime, whereas commitment refers to a focused dedication.

Take this example of how habit becomes commitment: activate screen time monitoring on your smartphone. How many hours a week are you committing to social media?

Without even realizing it, we do “commit” away from our desires much of the time. If you are dissatisfied in a persistent situation, you can step back and ask yourself what you have been committing to.

This question will often reveal some accountability at play, even if it’s as simple as continued acquiescence to and participation in a situation or circumstance you are not aligned with.

We often commit to a repetition of thoughts and actions that are tethered to our conditioning or our comfort zone or our fear.

What is happening now?

Check in by asking what is actually happening now. Often, you are more committed to what is happening than what you say you desire.

Here are three examples:

Desire: to write a book
Reality: not writing it
Committing to: working overtime, spending time with your kids, scrolling on Facebook, Netflix before bed, going to the gym, reiterating beliefs about not being qualified, etc

Desire: to be promoted
Reality: stagnant in your position
Committing to: doing office housework, focusing only on skills that you feel comfortable and competent in, being productive rather than demonstrating leadership and delegation, waiting for recognition rather than active self-promoting, etc

Desire: a loving, supportive relationship
Reality: a confusing, uncommitted relationship
Committing to: chasing unavailable people, subjugating your own needs, sticking with what doesn’t work, rationalizing someone else’s behavior, fantasizing what could be rather than seeing reality, etc

As you can see, what you are committed to is not always a negative thing. However, sometimes it is self-sabotaging or shows a lack of faith that you could have what you want.

What can you do?

Seeing what you are currently committing helps to reveal how you actually feel and what the braver action might be.
Perhaps it’s not the time to write that book based on what you value right now, so you can stop beating yourself over the head with “should”.

Perhaps you have not realized that you are hiding in your comfort zone,and you realize it’s time to start playing at the level you wish to reach.

Perhaps commitment to what you want you requires walking away from what is not good enough, with faith what you want will come.

In each case, it’s enlightening to see what you are actually committing to and whether that aligns with your true desires for yourself.

What are you believing?

Also, consider whether your mind and heart are in coherence with your desire. There’s a reason why we commit to what we’re actually doing now, even if unconscious.

Our current behavior may match our sense of self-worth, or self-love or our conditioning around what is possible for us or what is normal. It may be rewarding at the egoic fear-based level.

We often want something and also hold limiting beliefs about why it is not desirable or possible, for us. We might hold beliefs that would make the realization itself hollow.

You want to write a book. But your idea about who a published author is doesn’t match your own sense of yourself.

You want a promotion. But you are also terrified the new role would just mean more anxiety.

You want a supportive, loving relationship. But you fear that relationship means compromise and you are too much for anyone.

Despite knowing what we want, some parts of our internal selves might run contradictory to realizing it, or even letting ourselves fully want it.

As Anne Lamott writes, “If you’re not enough before the gold medal, you won’t be enough with it.”

By asking yourself what you long for, observing what you are actually committed to (instead), and investigating the beliefs underpinning what you are habitually doing, you can gift yourself a wake up call.

And then, you can choose to re-orient your energies towards alignment with what you really want.

Tag Archive for: commitment

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